Red, White and ooVoo

As the Fourth of July is approaching with many on vacation, I’ll make this brief. I was wondering what I could find that would tie our country’s independence to IP Communications. Clearly, it wasn’t around during the Revolutionary war and no amount of spin can change that. Perhaps, a few of us will forego traveling to an actual fireworks display and watch it over the web or replays on YouTube. But that is hardly worth noting. And more of a yawn is that a VoIP call will be made using an IP PBX or ITSP. However, there is an announcement that ties the two together.

After working closely with the Congressional network security team, Republican leaders and various House stakeholders, the US Congress has approved the use of ooVoo and Skype to conduct video chat sessions. This gives the congress the opportunity to reduce costs, accelerate communications and appear to be on the ball with technology.

Given the congress’ usual slow adoption rate for just about anything, I suppose 8 years for Skype and 5 years for ooVoo isn’t bad. Let’s hope the members and their staffers use the technology wisely. Given what they have done behind and, most recently in front of, still cameras, they will need to show some restraint with full motion available. A word of advice, what goes on the web, stays on the web for everybody to see. It isn’t Vegas.